At 38, Natalie Maines is releasing her first solo album, a rock LP called 'Mother.' / Michael Underwood, Special for USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

BRENTWOOD, Calif. - Squint in the sun, and this is the woman who used to be mad as hell.

But anonymity has been kind to Natalie Maines, who exited music for the "hum-drum and mundane" when the Dixie Chicks bid adieu to the mass market seven years ago.

Kicking off her flip-flops poolside at her home in Brentwood, she disputes this. "When I see my face starting to sag and I'm getting older, I think, 'Oh, my God, I'm 38. And I'm just having my first solo album.' " Maines shakes her head and sips iced tea as conversation skips from parenting tips gleaned from her friend Howard Stern ("He just makes me extra-aware to not burden my kids with my problems or my fears") to Mother, her new rock album out Tuesday.

Mother is the first major musical effort from Maines since the night she and the Chicks swept five categories at the Grammy Awards for Taking the Long Way, a beautifully defiant hit album blacklisted by radio in the wake of Maines' anti-Bush comments in 2003.

On tour in London as the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq, 11 words sidelined her career: Maines told the audience that the Chicks were "ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." The fallout was venomous: Country radio turned its back on the group, fans smashed their CDs in front of news cameras and ticket sales dramatically weakened.

After seeing Taking the Long Way through to its Grammys redemption, Maines, a self-described "happy-go-lucky person who didn't have a lot of problems," blessed by a "normal, boring childhood," stepped away from music indefinitely. She sought therapy (thanks to Stern, she says) and began to process the years spent as an object of intense vitriol.

It still makes her uncomfortable to watch footage from those years. "I think, "She's a baby! Everyone leave her alone! She's a child!' "

READY TO MAKE MUSIC

A year ago, she felt ready to walk into her friend Ben Harper's studio. But Maines warned his band that she hadn't told Sony she was recording new songs and there wouldn't be much money in it, if any. They were up for "trying it and just making music," she says. "And so we did that for months before we ever called it an album or admitted it was an album."

Harper, who lends an Americana, acoustic-driven pop-rock vibe to Mother, calls those early sessions "purposeful, in that she was ready to sing. Us being friends and the close proximity of the studio to her home, it fell into place that way but it didn't become a record until midway because it was just, 'Let's have fun and put no pressure on what it would become.' "

There is no country music on the new album, nor do Martie Maguire and Emily Robison make an appearance (although Maines includes an unreleased Chicks song deemed "too rock" for the band, Come Cryin' to Me, as a tribute). Instead, she returns to her rock roots, covering Pink Floyd's Mother, Jeff Buckley's lyrical Lover, You Should've Come Over, reformatting Eddie Vedder's Without You, a song off his Ukulele Songs album, and bringing reflective new songs, like Take It On Faith, to life.

Lover, You Should've Come Over is "the song Adrian and I woke up to every morning the first year we were together," says Maines. "That was what the alarm clock was set to." Covering Buckley is hallowed ground, co-producer Harper admits, but "it took a woman to fit into Jeff's range and someone with the power of Natalie. There are very few that have that vocal prowess."

Overall, there's a tonal change from songs like Not Ready to Make Nice, and Columbia Records president Ashley Newton calls it a "fascinating feel and direction for Natalie to choose for her first solo project."

The album may surprise her fans. "It sounds like it was almost made in a vacuum without expectations or precedent," says music writer Chris Willman (Yahoo Music, The Hollywood Reporter). "It's probably the first album she's made that wasn't made to be overtly commercial or to satisfy millions of fans or to react to a backlash as the last Chicks album did."

Collectively, pain and excavation plays out in Mother, but not anger. "I think this album is less disgruntled than some people thought it might be," Maines says. "There's no politics on it. It's really just about love and life and simple things."

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHICKS?

Maines still likens the Chicks' run to a marriage. "Things ebb and flow."

They're on again this summer: Maines is committed to playing festivals with the Chicks in Canada, an obligation that will pull her full focus from Mother until late summer or early fall. Still, Maines admits it's been hard finding a tour to join that knows what to make of her new sound.

Performing solo has been "the weirdest part" of venturing out on her own, says Maines, who tested the new album at SXSW music festival and in L.A.'s Troubadour club. "Also, I'm just not sure who my audience is. And I can feel them trying to figure out what I'm doing. So there's some growth to be done there."

Radio is having the same reaction. Without You is No. 139 on USA TODAY's adult-alternative charts. "This is not an obvious record," says Sean Ross, author of the industry newsletter Ross On Radio. But, "she still has an audience that wants to hear whatever she does. It will largely be a matter of getting the word out to them."

Ask Maines what she'd do in the past if she knew then what she knows now, and the pause is long. "I probably would have been more passive," she says. "I might not have fought it at all." That epic Grammys night turned out to be the chink in her armor.

"After we won our fifth award, we went backstage and I went into the bathroom and just was crying uncontrollably, and I didn't know why. I didn't feel sad - I was telling Martie and Emily, 'I don't know why I'm crying.' But I could not stop. And looking back, I think for me, that was the end of a chapter. And I felt victorious. I really did just kind of feel like, 'OK, now I'm going to (expletive) stop fighting.' Because even if all these people hated me â?¦I felt like people in our industry made a statement with their vote as well, just about what's right in music and free speech."

MAINES AS 'MOM'

As lunch is being made in her glossy, modern teal kitchen, her in-laws watch CNN at the table. Next to the fridge, a wall is striped with crayon lines scratched shoulder-high, noting her sons' growth spurts. The boys are slowly realizing that mom is a force to be reckoned with. Performing recently, "it was cute, I feel like they have a new respect for me," she grins. "I'm not the (dimwit) they thought I was. I wasn't born just to make their lunch and do their laundry."

A lone paparazzo is parked outside, but his lens is not on Maines - right now, at least. "They're waiting on Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner," says Maines. "I surround myself with A-listers so no one's looking for me."

Therapy has made her less impulsive, but Maines, a prolific Twitter user, lays out her political beliefs unapologetically. "I'm pro-gay marriage. Pro-gay everything. I'm pro-choice. I'm liberal on every social aspect, probably. More liberal than people would even believe. But there's still some of that Texas in me, as far as the gun debate. I wish there were no guns, I'm all for gun restrictions. But I'm also of the mind-set, if nothing changes, I'm getting a gun."

What else will protect her, if nothing changes, she asks. "You have to take driver's ed, you have to get a fishing license, police have to have training to operate their weapon, military have to have training. We're all used to training and rules and regulations in every other aspect of life."

Her grip on the market is still a one-two punch of unforgettable voice and a powerhouse personality. "I think 30 years from now, whatever she's doing, people will want to know what's Natalie Maines up to," says Willman. "She's a galvanizing, polarizing figure."

The mountain before her seems to suit. "I like how this all feels new again," says Maines. "And like I am having to fight my way up or out."

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